In a press release from June 5, owners of the Fixin’ To, Bart and Marli Blasengame, announced an operational pivot for the much loved St. Johns bar and live music venue: The sizable backroom of the bar would no longer be hosting concerts. This comes after the owners initially put the business and building up for sale last year.

Fixin’ To's shift away from live music occurred as the Blasengames realized: “It just wasn’t sustainable for us anymore. We were cutting it close budget-wise before COVID, and having to borrow more money to stay in business during the shutdown. We just took on too much water and were slowly, painfully sinking.” Ben Blasengame wrote: “I'm fiercely proud of what we did, but at [certain points] survival means moving on.”

The Blasengames cited increased insurance and operational costs as major factors in the initial attempt to sell and their eventual decision to change business models. The Fixin’ To’s shift from live music underscores what venue owners, promoters, and area musicians have been speaking out more and more about in regards to the future of live music in Portland. Do live shows bring in enough money? Is the City of Portland hospitable to live music culture? Can one venue’s decision to abandon live music spark additional conversations needing to be had?

Enter St. Johns resident Chris Rhodes, co-owner of Hollywood District barcade Wedgehead and owner-operator of Out of Order Amusement—a pinball and video game machine rental company pushing the nerd agenda in bars and arcades across the tri-county area.

“When [the Blasengames] were looking to sell, I was like, ‘What would it cost for me to rent that back room? What would it cost for me to put an arcade in that backroom?’” Rhodes explains. “[The Blasengames] were like, ‘Well, why don’t you just operate the games, and we’ll keep operating the bar?’”

As a last live music hurrah, Portland punk band Railing brought down the house on July 3. La Predateur and Old City & the Manglers supported the bill, sending the music venue off in style.

Within a week of their final concert, the Fixin’ To announced the opening of the Green Room, a space stocked mostly with pinball machines supplemented with arcade games. Rhodes retrofitted the machines to activate with custom arcade tokens, a “fun collectible, if you wanted to walk home with something in your pocket,” he says.

The Fixin’ To hosted the first St. Johns Classic on July 19—a pinball tournament accredited by the game’s global sanctioning body, the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA). Rhodes plans to cement the Classic as an annual event for the most serious, or opportunistic, members of Portland’s pinball gaming community.

How big is pinball in Portland? The IFPA website advertises 91 tournaments in the Portland metro area, including the St. Johns Classic, scheduled through 2025.

Further broadening its appeal, the Fixin’ To allows minors in the Green Room until 5 pm, and in keeping with industry trends, the bar has also expanded its offerings of non-alcoholic beverages.

Both the Blasengames and Rhodes are aware that their business decision may be perceived as a zero-sum outcome, pitting live music heads against pinball gamers.

St. Johns dreampop fans were able to enjoy the first Dreamgaze PDX fest from the comfort of their own neighborhood, when it took over the venue for an entire weekend last fall. This year, the second annual Dreamgaze PDX fest kicks off much further in, at Swan Dive.

“I feel guilty moving in there. I feel like a destroyer of live music. I don’t want that to be the case,” Rhodes said, noting that Wedgehead itself occupies a former live music venue. “I don’t want to be the killer of live music. That’s not my plan.”

Nor was it the Blasengames’ intention to continue operating the Fixin’ To. “I hope people know that we tried really hard. We love music, and we loved providing a space that people could come and blow off steam,” Blasengame writes.

The bones of the longtime bar remain: Frito pies, cocktails named after Southern luminaries, and a photo of Bill Clinton in a University of Arkansas Razorbacks foam hat all still make the Fixin’ To a favorite watering hole—though you’ll now have to look elsewhere if you’re in the mood for live music.